Artbeat

Error message

After 20 years of service as children’s choir director at Sargent Avenue Mennonite Church, Winnipeg, Man., Lori Wiebe gets to sit back on May 8 and enjoy an encore of songs from past musicals she has directed over the years. Pictured at right is Mel Braun, who is also leaving his post as accompanist after 11 years.

For Lori Wiebe, the May 8 performance of The Rock Slinger and his Greatest Hit, a musical about David and Goliath, was a significant milestone in her life. After 20 years of directing the Sargent Avenue Mennonite Church Children’s Choir, this was her last musical.

Three days before the official May 2 release date for Mennonite Girls Can Cook, Herald Press officials were already ordering a reprint. The cookbooks had arrived early from the printer, and workers at the Herald Press warehouses in Waterloo, Ont., and Scottdale, Pa., were filling 600 pre-orders and responding to nearly 3,000 new orders.

Nettie Baer, left, sits with her nephew, John Thiessen. Waterloo Region author Erica Jantzen, who helped with Nettie’s Story: The Pax Years, Feb. 1954 - Nov. 1956, stands behind them at the book launch on May 16.

“Will the fellows like my cooking?” wondered Nettie Redekopp in 1954 as she arrived at the Pax post-World War II rebuilding project in Wedel, Germany. That question haunted her for years, but finally in 2010 she dredged up the courage and began to call those whose phone numbers she could find.

Although The Liptonians are not a religious band, singer-guitarist Bucky Driedger, left, says his Mennonite heritage has influenced the way he writes the band’s lyrics.

Most of the members of Flying Fox and the Hunter Gatherers have Mennonite roots, including Paul Schmidt, second from right.

Bucky Driedger, second from right, and his Royal Canoe band mates.

Writers with Mennonite roots, like David Bergen, Miriam Toews and Di Brandt, have long dominated southern Manitoba’s literary scene. Now, the community’s music scene is experiencing a similar sort of influence.

Haitians and Canadians mingle in a joyful dance in the Haitian village during a recent production of Iron Will in Waterloo, Ont.

About a year ago some Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA) staff saw the play Iron Will in Hamilton, Ont. So inspired were they by its microfinance message that they came back to the Waterloo office wondering if it could be performed there.

Colin Firth stars as Prince Albert/King George VI in the Academy Award-winning film, The King’s Speech.

It is a hard thing to live with as much fear as Albert (Colin Firth) harbours. But it is especially difficult when you are a royal. For Prince Albert, later to become Great Britain’s King George VI, the familiar fears of authority figures, childhood bullies and judgmental crowds are made all the worse by his debilitating stammer.

As Christendom weakens in Europe and North America, worship and mission are poised to reunite after centuries of separation. But this requires the church to rethink both “mission” and “worship.” In post-Christendom mission, God is the main actor and God calls all Christians to participate.

The boys choir combined with youths and men to form a 270-voice mass choir that performed ‘A Thousand Hallelujahs’ at the Winnipeg Centennial Concert Hall on Jan. 23. The concert concluded with ‘Arise!’, a commissioned work by Larry Nickel.

“For God is great and worth a thousand hallelujahs!” proclaims the psalmist (The Message).

On Jan. 23, a mass Faith and Life Male Choir united to celebrate more than 25 years of ministry and to proclaim this message with the psalmist.

The book Through Fire and Water: An Overview of Mennonite History was first published in 1996 by Herald Press and presented the Mennonite faith story within the sweep of church history for youths and adults wanting to learn more about the denomination or their heritage. Now, 14 years later, it needed to be revised and updated to be more globally and ethnically inclusive.

For Carrie Martens, a student at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Ind., using a prayer book like Take Our Moments and Our Days helps her feel “connected to God, to Scripture and the greater Christian community. . . . It has helped me pray in ways that are meaningful and with words that express my faith journey,” she says gratefully.

The Just Food exhibit included a display of typical food consumed in a poor community in a developing country, left, a middle-class community in a developing country, centre, and many households in North America, right. The sign reads, ‘Where do you fit in?’

A visitor views Annelies Soomers’ piece, ‘Daily Bread: From Plague to Blessing,’ at the Just Food exhibit opening on at the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery on Nov. 20.

The right to food is a non-issue for many Canadians. In fact, many people in the western world take food for granted.

From a faith perspective, many feel that, although they may not be hungry themselves, food systems are unjust when there is abundant food available to some while others go without.

Those who believe in a creating God must acknowledge that a bodily existence—our sexuality—and our spiritual essence—our souls—are both part of God’s creative action in bringing forth into existence human beings.

We are human because we are embodied souls. Jesus was incarnated, becoming an embodied spirit, and, thereby, fully human.

Anne Krabill Hershberger is editor of the second edition of Sexuality: God’s Gift (Herald Press, 2010). In July, she spoke to John Longhurst of Mennonite Publishing Network about why it’s hard for Christians to talk about sexuality, and about the nature of true intimacy.

The merger of Mennonite Publishing Network (MPN), the publishing ministry of Mennonite Church Canada and MC U.S.A., and Third Way Media, a department of Mennonite Mission Network (MMN), was approved on Sept. 23 by the boards of MPN and MMN at a meeting in Pittsburgh, Pa.

Not that long ago, many people knew how to preserve food. Information about canning, freezing and drying was passed down from generation to generation. But that’s not the case today, say Susanna Meyer and Mary Clemens Meyer, co-authors of Saving the Seasons: How to Can, Freeze or Dry Almost Anything, a new book from Herald Press.

In his new book, Nelson Kraybill, most recently president of Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart Ind., does not follow the Book of Revelation in a linear fashion, something that will be confusing for some. But it allows him to work on themes like emperor worship, the returning Nero myth, and the patronage system of client and patron.

Elsie Cressman, foreground, the subject of the new documentary, Return to Africa: The Story of Elsie Cressman, is pictured with filmmakers Paul Francescutti, and Paula and Paul Campsall, at a screening in Waterloo, Ont., this summer.

On June 27, the Princess Twin Cinema in uptown Waterloo had to open up a second room to view the 2010 movie, Return to Africa: The Story of Elsie Cressman, with Cressman, now 87, in attendance.